


The Changing Face of Cool

by Morgana



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things that just mark the cool people</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Changing Face of Cool

When Stiles was ten years old, the coolest person he knew was his aunt Jess. She was his mom’s sister, but because the two of them were almost fifteen years apart, she ended up being more like an awesome big sister for Stiles. Jess was great - she took Stiles to museums and amusement parks, let him eat as much cotton candy as he wanted (even if he got sick in the car on the way home), and rented PG-13 movies for them to watch while they gorged on pizza and junk food when his parents went out together. So when Jess got a tattoo, it should’ve surprised absolutely no one that Stiles was completely fascinated with it.

“I want a tattoo, too,” he told his mom that night when she came in to tuck him in. “Just like Jess.”

“I don’t know if you want one _exactly_ like hers, sweetie,” she said with a smile.

Stiles thought about that for a minute, then nodded. Butterflies were awesome, but they _were_ kind of girly. “I’ll get Batman,” he decided. “Or maybe Wolverine.”

His mom kissed him, then patted his leg. “You have lots of time to think about that,” she said. “You have to be eighteen to get a tattoo, so that’s a long ways away.”

It was indeed. Stiles smiled at his mom and yawned. “Definitely Batman,” he said sleepily. “He’s the coolest superhero...”

***********

When Stiles was twelve years old, Jess was still the coolest person he knew, even if she wasn’t _quite_ as cool as she used to be. She’d gotten married last spring, and now she either brought David with her when she came over to babysit him or had him come over to their apartment, where everything looked like it was out of a magazine. He had to do his homework before they could have any fun, but they still had video game battles, and David was actually pretty good at Mario Kart, so Stiles was okay with him. Plus, he had a pretty cool tattoo.

David called the stark black lines that crisscrossed and wound around his arm a tribal design. He said he’d decided to get it after he’d gone to New Zealand, where the Maori tattooed their whole faces, which was equal parts awesome and terrifying. Stiles considered dressing up as a Maori warrior for Halloween for all of five seconds, as long as it took him to Google their costumes and find out that it was basically a skirt. Getting a makeup face tattoo would’ve been cool as hell, but not if it meant he had to wear a skirt to school. _Nothing_ was worth that.

Stiles settled on being Nightwing, with a sweet fake tribal tattoo on his arm that Jess had gotten him. He’d had to promise not to tell his parents, but he didn’t think they’d care all that much if they did see it. It wasn’t like they didn’t know he was getting his own tattoo once he was old enough, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to go with the whole tribal look. It was just so... black, and while David’s was cool, the fake one Stiles was wearing was a little weird, all spikes and lines, and it looked strange on his arm.

He got home late from trick-or-treating to find his parents waiting in the kitchen for him. Stiles hurried to change out of his costume, looking forward to hot chocolate and a Halloween movie, and in the process, he forgot to keep his tattoo covered. Not that it mattered when he got back downstairs and they told him their news.

***********

When Stiles was fourteen, the coolest person he knew was Jackson Whittemore. He was everything Stiles wished he could be - good-looking, popular, great at lacrosse, and most of all, Lydia Martin’s boyfriend. Okay, he was also a huge douchenozzle, but aside from that, he was almost perfect. If perfect included giant assholes who thought making fun of Stiles for everything about him counted, that was. Still, cool was cool, and Jackson stood to be the coolest guy around for years, given that he was getting a Porsche when he turned sixteen and probably a tattoo as soon as it was legal.

Stiles took some comfort in knowing that Jackson was the kind of person that would get a standard douchey ‘wolf howling at the moon’ tattoo that he would almost certainly end up regretting by the time he was forty.

He’d actually started thinking about his own tattoo over the last year, but he wasn’t settled on anything yet. It should mean something, he knew that, and he wanted it to be more than some design that he picked out and assigned a meaning to. It should have a meaning in and of itself, even if he was the only one that really got it. For a while after... _after_ , he’d thought about getting something for her, either her name or one of the roses she’d loved so much. He just wasn’t sure if having something that made him think of her every time he looked at it would make him hurt less or more. And he wasn’t about to ask his dad, not when he couldn’t even say her name or mention her without his voice cracking.

It was times like this that he really wished Jess still lived nearby and he could go over to her place and escape his own. But David had gotten a new job in Colorado, so they’d moved last year, and besides, they were all about the new baby now. Stiles didn’t really blame them, especially since Jess had come for visits as often as she could while his mom was sick, and she’d tried to talk to him, but he’d been too mad to listen. He was still mad, and he didn’t see that changing anytime soon. It just wasn’t fair - assholes like Jackson got to keep _their_ moms, but his was gone! And his mom had been way better than Jackson’s, too. She hadn’t just bought him shit - she’d loved him and accepted him and now that she was gone, there was just his dad. And if something happened to him...

But Stiles was going to make sure that nothing bad happened to his dad. Not if he could help it.

***********

When Stiles was sixteen, Derek Hale was not only the coolest person _he_ knew, but probably the coolest person on the planet. Screw Jackson’s Porsche and lacrosse skills - Derek had a Camaro and a black leather jacket and tight jeans and he was a freaking werewolf! _That_ was majorly cool, right down to the glowing eyes and growling. So Stiles wasn’t all that surprised when he found out that Derek had a tattoo, and one with a mystical meaning, at that.

That tattoo had been starring in his fantasies for a while, now. He kissed it and licked it and dragged his nails down over it while Derek fucked him through the floor. Last night he’d dreamed about staring down at it while he took his own turn fucking Derek, and he’d woken up so hard that he’d come almost as soon as he wrapped his fingers around his dick. And sometimes, in the daydreams he would never, ever admit to having, he traced the pattern with his fingers while they lay in bed afterwards and Derek actually talked to him, told him about the thoughts and feelings that he kept hidden from everyone else and then asked Stiles about himself in return. That was the dangerous daydream, because the sex was hot, but if that last bit actually happened, Stiles knew he’d fall head over heels in love with Derek. The real thing, not the Lydia Martin longing love. And that was just begging for trouble.

Stiles had tried ignoring Derek _and_ his tattoo, but that wasn’t really happening. The guy just ended up barging back into his life making demands and taking his shirt off, twice now in Stiles’ room, like he didn’t have a home of his own! Of course, that thought usually reminded Stiles that Derek _didn’t_ have a home, or a family either, and then he would end up so sad that only the fluffy daydream could make him feel better, because maybe then _he_ could help Derek set up a home, and if Derek didn’t want to talk about his family, then maybe Stiles could share his with Derek. It wasn’t a huge one like he’d come from, but he did have his dad and Scott and Melissa, and they were all totally awesome.

Sometimes he wondered what his mom would’ve thought of Derek. But most of the time he knew - she’d have made him brownies and hot chocolate and gotten him to help with her roses and then Derek would’ve gotten hot and dirty and taken his shirt off, and Stiles would’ve been in even more trouble than he was now.

***********

When Stiles was eighteen, his best friend was the coolest person he knew. And one of the best, as well, right up there with his dad, his mom, and Jess. It took a huge ass dose of cool to deal with all the shit that had landed on Scott’s shoulders over the last couple of years, from the change of species to becoming a sacrifice and having his first love die in his arms. But Scotty had not only taken the blows, he’d turned them into something else, finding his power as a True Alpha and building a pack that was a formidable defense for Beacon Hills.

So... yeah, definitely the coolest person Stiles knew, even if he had shit taste in tattoos.

He knew what Scott said about the double rings, but Stiles thought it was dumb. And okay, it wasn’t on his body, but still... tattoos should _mean something_! It was why he hadn’t run off and gotten his tattoo the moment he was legal - he still wasn’t sure what he wanted. With all the supernatural shit that had gone down in the last few years, something that might help with that made sense, but when he looked into it, he couldn’t decide. An ankh, to safeguard his life? An eye of Horus, for protection? A series of runes, for warding off evil and bringing good things to the pack? A smaller copy of Derek’s triskelion, to let him know that while Stiles was part of Scott’s pack, he was still Derek’s? There were just too many options to settle on only one.

As it was, the only design he’d managed to factor out was a pawprint, and that had mostly been a joke to begin with, a way to ruffle Scott’s and Derek’s fur. It had worked - just the mention of a pawprint tattoo was enough to make them both growl, then spend at least half an hour grumbling about people who thought wolf tattoos were cool and how wolves were ‘proud animals in their own right, not just there to sell tattoos and Ed Hardy shirts’. Stiles still smirked when he remembered how that last comment had made Jackson’s ears turn bright red - served the jerkwad right for wearing those goddamn shirts in the first place. But he could understand their objection, and while he might like to tug their metaphorical tails, he wasn’t about to _really_ upset them like that.

So in retrospect, it made perfect sense that when Stiles went to Cancun for spring break and got blackout drunk for the first time in his life, he woke up with a pawprint tattoo on his right hip.


End file.
